Homework assignment #4
Slightly modified exercise 4.12 from Bevington, and question 6.4 from Bevington. The questions are reproduced below.
4.1 (4.12): Take the data that you
used in HW #1, problem 1 (text or xls) , and the histogram you generated of the data in 5-point
bin intervals. Plot a Gaussian curve based on the mean and standard deviation
of the data, normalized to the area of the histogram. Apply the chi-square
test and check the associated probability from table C.4 in Bevington. (For
a definition of the "chi-square" test, see section 4.3 of Bevington, or Taylor
Chpt 12.)
4.2 (6.4): Derive a formula for making a linear fit to data with an intercept at the origin so that y = bx. Apply your method to fit a straight line through the origin to the following set of data (text or xls). Assume uniform uncertainties of si=2.0 in yi. Find the reduced chi-squared for the fit and the uncertainty in b. Note, do this problem analytically, i.e., do not use packaged fitting routines! You may use a spreadsheet, but you must show the formulas for each column!